The announcement of the Pittsburgh closing came at the same time that Trump was urging followers via Twitter to boycott Macy’s.
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The building was recently sold to Core Realty, a Philadelphia-based company “planning a major mixed-use redevelopment for the historic building”.
The store, which opened in 1887 and has been a Macy’s since 2006, will complete a clearance sale in September.
The current store workforce includes 170 employees.
Macy’s said laid-off employees will be offered severance packages. About 30 people who work in district offices in the building will be relocated to another store.
Macy’s says it decided to sell to because it was only using one-third of the building’s 1.2 million square feet of space, leaving upper floors idle.
About 475,000 square feet of that is being used as selling space.
Macy’s and Kaufmann’s before it have served shoppers at the Fifth Avenue and Smithfield Street location since 1887.
The Macy’s store in Downtown Pittsburgh is going to close, the Cincinnati, Ohio-based department store chain announced this morning. “In the spirit of the Kaufmann family and all they have left us – from the Irene Kaufmann Settlement to Fallingwater – we in Pittsburgh know how to preserve what is great about our past and build upon it for the future”. It is evidently this vision that convinced Macy’s to “make the entire building available to Core so it could evolve its plans into a more holistic project” as Macy’s believe that Core’s vision will become an “outstanding addition to the downtown Pittsburgh community”. There are actually as much 2,450 Macy’s employees working in the Greater Pittsburgh area alone.
The store’s role as an anchor in the city’s core was acknowledged in a statement issued by Mayor Bill Peduto.
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